Rabbit Hole
by writerofberk
Summary: Hiccup thought he'd landed in the middle of a fairy tale when he'd fallen down that rabbit hole. But beneath the bright painted eggs and bubblegum charm, this netherworld hides many dark secrets, and he knows he's got to get out. Except Wonderland isn't quite ready to let him go… AU. Psychological fuckery. Rating may go up. Based loosely off Alice in Wonderland.
1. Chapter 1

**_Rabbit Hole_**

 **A/N: Sooo. This is my newest fanfiction. Inspired by reading "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, and one too many replays of "Tag, You're It" by Melanie Martinez. Also, "Her Name is Alice" by Shinedown. Everyone should hear that song. It's a great song. Everyone should also listen to Tag You're It.**

 **Now, this is not me knocking the source material, but this is actually only based loosely off the book. The first couple chapters follow the book's events almost exactly, only with a modern spin and a sarcastic, self-deprecating teenager in place of the thoughtful girl who stars in the original book; but after that, it deviates wayyyyy away from the source material, and becomes...um...dark. Really. Really. Dark. Really fast. And, as a warning, this fic places Bunny in a less-than-glowing light. Much as I like Bunnymund, I don't think this fic is actually going to go terribly OOC. Considering his back story, something like this could have happened, had Bunny been a more selfish person. Anyway. Rambles. I won't spoil it. Just read. READ. And please review, so I might be inspired, and write the next chapter, and get to the good (a.k.a. angsty) parts, and destroy practically everything I build xDDDD That's how I roll, graphic torture fics outta controlllll...Ahem. Anyway. Please review?**

* * *

The day was exceedingly fine.

It was, in fact, the first nice day the little town of Berk had seen in what seemed like years; it was sometime in the first week of April, not quite Easter, not yet full spring but near enough nonetheless, and the warm winds had finally blown away the wet, frigid snows of the previous season. The spring sun glittered brightly, falling in powerful rays upon the grass, which had shed its brown colors for greener hues as of late. The skies were a perfect blue, and there was not a trace of any dark shades within the puffy white clouds rolling happily across the clear azure.

Hiccup Haddock tossed a final longing glance out the bus window, gave a small sigh and turned back to the page before him, showing a half-completed sketch of a mournful-looking hound; the animal's drooping ears and half-lidded eyes gave it a patient, saddened air. He lowered his pencil to the page again, mentally mapping out the rest of the dog, but the bus jerked to a sudden stop; when the driver cut the engine, the vehicle shuddered before falling obediently silent and still.

"Alright, class," the teacher at the front, a brunette woman with an enthusiastic smile, rose from her seat beside the driver, "we've arrived. Please remember that your presence here is a privilege, respect the rules of the museum, and conduct yourselves accordingly. And have fun!"

Hiccup erased a pencil mark before shutting his sketchbook and shoving it in his backpack as the other kids rose to their feet, chattering and laughing. The teacher exited the bus with her students and Hiccup lingered for as long as possible, slipping the backpack over his shoulder before thumping down the dirty black steps and beginning to follow the rest of his class.

Ahead of him, he could hear the Thorston twins grumbling to each other.

"Let's just get this done," Tuffnut muttered sourly. "Like, why do we have to look at art all day? It's so stupid."

"I know," Ruffnut replied mutinously. "And then we have to write an essay about something we saw here that…what was it?" She turned immediately to Fishlegs, a husky blond boy with a squeaky, nervous voice and a shy disposition.

"That made us feel things," he responded promptly, but softly.

"Like, what does that even mean?" Tuffnut almost shouted the words, and the other two shushed him.

"It's to give us an appreciation of art, nimrods," Astrid's cool, haughty voice cut through the conversation. "And to help us realize the power a piece can have over us." She blew a piece of shiny blond hair out of her gorgeous blue eyes, but it fell right back into place.

Upon seeing her, Hiccup's hands grew sweaty on the strap of his backpack, and he looked away, dropping his gaze to the grass under his feet. It was no good thinking about her, not when she barely knew he was alive – the brief interactions they had had during classes had let her know of his existence in the worst possible ways.

"I'll tell you how art makes me feel," Tuffnut shook out his waist-length hair. "Bored!"

"Tell me about it," Snotlout Jorgenson, Hiccup's cousin and least favorite person on earth, joined the conversation suddenly before glancing behind himself. When he locked eyes with his relative, an odd smile, similar to that of a smirk, twisted his lips. He turned back to his friends and spoke loudly enough to be sure the other heard. "Walk quicker, guys – the Useless is right behind us. I hear loser is catching."

Hiccup rather thought that his ears would not have burned; his cheeks would not have turned red; he would not have hung his head and stared at the grass for all the world as if it was the fascinating art of which they had just been speaking…if Astrid hadn't heard. He did not mind Snotlout's insults much; he only minded when the athletic blond girl was in the vicinity when he said them.

The twins cackled, and Snotlout grinned at the positive response; Fishlegs kept silent, as he always had, but Hiccup expected that. If he had a human friend at all, it would be the blond boy.

Astrid was also quiet, not laughing; but far from giving Hiccup hope, this only lowered his spirits further. The focus of his affections had never made fun of him before, like his cousin or the twins; had never kept silent out of loyalty, as Fishlegs did. In fact, she never took notice of Hiccup unless courtesy absolutely demanded; and when it did, she made it clear that she regarded him as little more than a waste of time.

And he rather thought he would have minded this quite a bit more had he not been so used to this feeling.

* * *

Sunny April days were almost unheard of in the town of Berk; so when high noon arrived, and the sun had risen higher in the sky and was brighter than ever, their teacher, Mrs. Yates, decided the students could lunch outside. Hiccup was pleased at the announcement, but the groaning of the teenagers beside him let him know that this was an unpopular opinion; he kept it to himself on the walk outside, and once there, he settled himself as far away from Snotlout and the twins as he could get. This meant that he ended up far away from everyone else, possibly out of earshot; he shrugged it off as he pulled out his lunch. He was sitting next to a bubbling, merry brook, and he was happy with the position, so he made no move to get up.

Earlier that morning, he'd sleepily slapped together a half-hearted turkey sandwich with an unidentifiable condiment from the fridge. He'd begun making his own lunches when he was much younger; with a late mother and workaholic father, it seemed it was this or go hungry. He set the brown paper bag in his lap, smoothing out the wrinkles, and took a bite of the sandwich.

As he steadily devoured the sandwich, he watched the creek, bubbling and streaming, silver water turned gold by the noon sun. When about half the sandwich had disappeared, and Hiccup had set the remaining bit down on the paper bag to take a drink of water, he allowed his eyes to sweep the grassy field whereupon they sat; and what he saw made him promptly choke.

After all, it wasn't every day you saw a gigantic, six-foot rabbit bounding with a woven basket on one furry arm, ears positioned to indicate satisfaction.

He immediately looked for a reaction from his classmates, but none of them had glanced up yet; everyone else was focused on their meal. Well…if nobody else had taken notice…perhaps it was nothing…even the basket could be excused, he told himself, for animals were known to do strange things in the name of self-defense.

Even so, he was filled with fascination and excitement at the sight of the animal, and watched it raptly. Ever since he was a small child, he'd had a soft spot for dogs, but it had grown into a love and interest in all animals, and he couldn't help hoping the large creature's journey would take it past him.

Almost as if reading his mind, the rabbit suddenly changed direction, bounding toward the trees, but in doing so, he had drawn closer to the boy, and Hiccup could swear he heard the creature mutter, "I'm gonna be late…" in a thick Australian accent.

Now he _knew_ he was dreaming.

It was quite one thing to see a large rabbit; the bigger ones were not native to these lands, but Hiccup would not have thought the rabbit, even with the basket, such a strange sight on its own, but a talking rabbit?

The animal crossed the brook in an effortless leap, and had hopped away into the woods. Hiccup was left staring at the deserted grass where the rabbit had been, and he stood, squinting in the bright sunlight to try and catch a final glimpse of the furry creature; when his attempts yielded nothing, he glanced back at his classmates; nobody had yet seen him, or the rabbit, hard as it was to believe.

So Hiccup jumped over the creek, too, teetering for a breathless second on the bank; the ground here was slippery with mud, and his sneakers tried to stay behind when he attempted to keep going. He could just see the gray rabbit, a long way ahead of him, so he gave the quarrelsome shoes a tug, dislodging them from the mud, and dashed ahead, very nearly tripping many times in his excitement. The rabbit turned and vanished from view; when Hiccup rounded the corner himself, it was just in time to see the big, furry gray ears disappearing down a rabbit hole.

For a reason he couldn't explain, even to himself, Hiccup took a breath and jumped down the rabbit hole.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Rabbit Hole**_

 **A/N: I had a little too much fun with this chapter xDDDD well, it was mostly just Hiccup wandering around the Warren, so...pretty easy chapter to write. I'm also really happy, for some reason, about the idea of him barely keeping it together xD like just thinking to himself, "So is he actually the Easter Bunny or am I just crazy or is this just the strangest day I've ever had? Either way, better keep believing in him so I can get out of here" xD**

 **Anyway, thanks for your reviews, follows, and favorites! Please leave more? :3 Also I promise the dark stuff IS coming in soonnnn just give me a few more chapters of set-up...also this chapter doesn't actually follow the book xD hey neither did the first one, I suppose...**

* * *

The fall began immediately.

For Hiccup, there was nothing but air at first, rather stale and cool from the underground atmosphere, and a breathless panic that sent his mind scrambling in circles; what ought he to do now? Somehow, he had not anticipated such a drop; he tried desperately to cling to the sides of the rabbit hole. But the earth here was hard and well-packed, and he couldn't get a handhold.

So he kept falling, and it took such a long time that he was just beginning to think about the bottom and what could possibly await him there; death, he supposed morbidly, so he squeezed shut his eyes and clenched tight his fists, small body braced for the impact.

But when he hit the ground, it was not hard; there was some sort of springy grass here to break his fall, yet when he tried to sit up and examine it, the movement dislodged loose dirt, and before he knew it, he was sliding down a long tunnel. It appeared completely devoid of any living thing besides himself, and he was nervous that perhaps he hadn't followed the rabbit closely enough.

Again, he tried to stop his fall, but his hands scraped uselessly along rough soil and sharp rock, earning him painful friction burns and cuts from the dirt and stones. Still, he scrabbled desperately for a grip, thinking that maybe he wasn't willing to follow the rabbit quite this far. There would be other gigantic, talking six-foot animals…

Yet even if he managed to stop himself, how was he ever to get out again? It was a question he ought to have asked himself much earlier.

Nevertheless, there was nothing to be done now – so he merely closed his eyes, hurtling deeper into the tunnel, and he felt certain he would reach the center of the earth soon. He sucked in breaths as fast as he could, for the sour air whipping past his face stole it away almost as soon as he got it.

At last, he thumped to the end of the tunnel, bruising his bottom severely on the mossy stones making up the ground here. Wait. Stones.

The boy rose gingerly to his feet, wincing slightly; the fall had not been kind to his body. Nonetheless, he soon forgot this at the sight of the stones again; running curious fingers over them, he reflected that they were cut in ways that man could not make; they had grown like this, and they must have been here a long time.

Hiccup suddenly lifted his gaze, looking around the place at large. It was not at all like the storybook rabbit hole.

Truly gigantic stone golems in the shape of…eggs? Hiccup paused for a moment to ponder this before stepping closer to them, jumping back when he noticed the cruel faces somebody had carved into the mossy rock; every egg glowered at him, making him feel, for the first time since his landing, a bit frightened.

Farther on, trees lined a walkway leading directly to a merry, bubbling stream, much like the brook he had eaten beside – except the stream here was much bigger, and there was no sticky mud caking its banks, the water gushed louder and more powerfully and…and the water ran bright purple.

In later years, Hiccup would reflect that he wasn't sure exactly why he rubbed at his eyes in complete disbelief; he had seen a talking rabbit earlier that day, for goodness' sake, yet he still blinked and gasped at the sight of the purple water. He drew nearer, as if in a trance, his sneakers pounding on the old stones with each step. When he reached the bank and slowly settled himself upon it, he saw that it was not a stretch of grass, as he had previously assumed; instead, bright flowers grew from one end of the bank to the other, as far as the eye could see, so many that Hiccup couldn't name them all, and had never even seen most of them.

He gingerly reached down, running his fingers along velvety, dew-spotted petals, before remembering his interest in the water and submerging his hand in it curiously. When he withdrew his fingers, however, he saw that it was not colored water, but dye; it stained his fingers a violent violet, and he wiped it hastily on his jeans. He repeated the action, green eyes bright with interest as he watched the colorful liquid lapping at his hands, the color bleeding into his pale, freckled skin. He pulled his hand away again, but it was a minute before he remembered his true mission; once he had, he rose to his full height, looking around the area cautiously. That giant, talking rabbit must still be here somewhere, right? And suppose he had missed him because he was too busy careening down tunnels and admiring flowers.

To tell the truth, Hiccup wasn't quite sure what he wanted from the rabbit; a method of climbing back out of the hole, definitely, but beyond that, he wasn't sure. So he glanced around, eyes straining for any sign, any movement, a twitch of gray ears, a flicker of a wet pink nose…

"Hello?" he called, edging very slightly away from the stream, still staring into the cool unknown beyond. For a minute, there was no answer but silence; then the ground quaked, vibrating unmistakably with the pattering of hundreds of sets of tiny feet. Fear crept into the boy's throat, remaining there; it was hard to swallow around the thick knot. "Hello?" he repeated, ears straining to pick up a sound, feet braced against the ground, prepared for more vibrations when they came.

And they came.

In mere moments, tiny chicken eggs gleaming a bright, clean white, were racing toward him in the thousands, running on short, thin legs. Legs shaking, Hiccup dropped to his knees to examine them, holding out his hands to entice them closer; when he did, they crowded around him, clearly as curious about him as he felt about them.

The eggs swarmed up suddenly, skittering up and down his arms, balancing on the backs of his hands or the toes of his dirty sneakers, one boldly scampering across his neck and causing a tickling sensation.

Hiccup instinctively jerked his shoulder in an attempt to get away from the feeling, and the sharp motion made the egg fall from its hard-won perch, and the small white creature began to plummet. The boy immediately cupped his hands, catching the tiny being and giving it a softer landing. "I'm so sorry if I scared you, I…well…to tell the truth, I'm not quite used to this. You know, live eggs. I mean, obviously, eggs have…live things in them, like little chickens…" Just great. He was talking to an egg. And also trying to quit because he worried about offending them. He shook it off, deciding not to continue the sentence, and gently knelt again, setting the egg on the floor. The others peeled away from him, which he found a relief; now he didn't have to worry about sudden movements. "Jeez, if this is where the rabbit really lives…why does he keep so many eggs? What is he, the Easter Bunny?" The boy laughed at the joke, at least until a sudden grinding noise made him glance up, drawing a sharp breath.

The stone eggs were moving.

They appeared to be turning themselves completely around, hiding their glowers and displaying instead merry faces with bright, joyous smiles and dimpled cheeks.

"Is everything…um…alive here?" the boy questioned, turning to the small eggs. "I'm really not okay with rocks suddenly becoming sentient." _Or eggs,_ he added silently.

"That'd be correct."

"What the—?" The startled boy started, spinning around, stuttering to a stammering stop when he caught sight of the gray rabbit standing just a few paces away. "What are you…why did—what—but—I called for you! Didn't you hear?"

The rabbit examined his paws coolly. "What do you want?"

"Um…out?"

This seemed to draw the animal's attention, because he glanced up suddenly, green eyes inquisitive. "Out?" he repeated uncomprehendingly.

"W-well, I mean, I'm stuck. I can't get out of this…place. I fell down your hole in the wood, and slid down a tunnel and wound up here, and…" he trailed off when he realized the rabbit appeared to have lost interest in the story.

"You fell?"

"Um… _well_ …" Hiccup rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. "I saw you running around outside, and I got curious."

The bunny's face remained expressionless, cold and hard as the stone golems. "So you followed me?"

"Yeah, but then, when I fell, I started thinking it wasn't such a good idea, and it was too late by then, so I realized I'd better find you either way, so I could get out."

"So you came tramping through these tunnels," the rabbit clarified coolly, "disturbing a million life forms, frightening the golems, and taking a bath in the lake of dye—

"I was curious!" the boy said hurriedly. "I didn't mean to frighten your golems, and I definitely didn't want to hurt anything, I was—I was curious! And I didn't take a bath, I just put a hand in!"

"—and you can actually see all this?"

"…Shouldn't I?"

"Well, it's just…you're kind of…old to still believe, aren't you?"

"Believe?"

"—I mean, it's great that you _do_ , but—

"What are you _talking_ about?"

This seemed to catch the rabbit's attention, for he stopped short, mouth open in preparation to deliver a response. Finally, after a moment's struggle, he found his voice and spoke. "You believe, right? Thirteen's normally the age when kids stop, but—

"Believe in _what_?" Hiccup demanded; he was so frustrated and confused that he failed to correct the bunny and tell him he was fourteen.

The rabbit raised a huge paw and tapped his own furry chest with it. "I-in me. Us. I mean, you've got to, if—if you can see us."

"But who _are_ you?"

This question seemed to catch the animal completely off-guard; for a long moment, he stood blinking silently at the boy. "I…I…the _Easter_ Bunny."

"But the Easter Bunny isn't _real_!"

"You must think I am on some level," the rabbit retorted; his voice was now sharp and brittle as ice. "Otherwise, you wouldn't see me, or any of this."

"Let me guess – in a minute, you'll be telling me the tooth fairy's your best friend," Hiccup said dryly.

There was a moment of silence.

"No," the boy spoke again, quickly, so as to get the words out before the rabbit could. "No, don't tell me. No, no, there is _no_ such thing as…as giant bunnies that can talk…or, or, fairies…no, no, you're not _real_!"

"Hold on a minute, mate, just take it easy—

"I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. I must be dreaming. Dad told me you weren't real, he told me you were a myth, I r-remember…I'm dreaming, I'm…I'm crazy—

"Hang on!" The rabbit yelled, practically pulling his ears out in frustration. "Don't do that – if you start thinking I'm not real, I'll fade, and you'll be alone again. Is that what you want? You can forget about getting out if you quit believing now."

Hiccup stopped short, weighing the truth of these words against the memory of his father's harsh tone. "You depend on me to keep you…here?"

"I'll be here whether you believe or not," the bunny replied. "But if you don't, you won't see me anymore."

There was another short silence.

"You don't really look like how I imagined the Easter Bunny."

The rabbit snorted. "I get that a lot."

"Mom told me you were _cute_."

"Cute is overrated," the animal replied without hesitation.

"She said you were small and fluffy," Hiccup protested – he couldn't say whether he was trying to find fault within the rabbit's claims, or if he was simply trying to gather information from the strange being. Perhaps he was trying to keep himself sane until he could accept the outrageous situation he found himself in.

At these words, the rabbit snorted; he looked away before he spoke again. "I saw you saved tha' googie," he admitted grudgingly. "That was decent of ya."

"Googie?" Hiccup repeated blankly.

The bunny chuckled, though the boy failed to see anything amusing about the situation. "S'an egg, mate."

"Oh," Hiccup glanced down at the eggs still crowded around him, kneeling to be closer to their height; he could still pick out the one that he had almost…killed? "Would it have died?"

"Huh?"

"The egg, would it have died had I not caught it?"

The bunny seemed to think about this for a while. "Yes," he said at last, nodding slightly. "I think."

"Okay." The boy rose again, brushing the grass stains off the knees of his jeans. "Do you think you can help me get out of here?"


	3. Chapter 3

_**Rabbit Hole**_

 **A/N: So...this is where the story really picks up. This chapter was originally 3k, but that felt too long, considering the first two chapters were only a thousand words each, so I split it up and made it into two chapters. So. This is the third. And I'm really sorry about my absence, guys. Chapter 3 is always a bitch for me to write, and I really don't know why. I guess it's because I always regard chapter 3 as the last setup chapter, and then I'm like ughh but the readers already had TWO chapters of setup do they really need a third so I bitch and moan for forever and finally pull myself together and write xD**

* * *

Hiccup liked to think of himself as an imaginative person.

How many nights had he lain in bed, creating stories in his mind or cradling books in his arms, starving for a world separate from his own? How many endless, empty summers had he whiled away, devouring books by day, dreaming of magic by night? How many birthdays, how many Christmases and New Years and Easters and holidays had passed in isolation for him, alone in his room, a pile of books at his side, ignoring the world outside so it wouldn't hurt near so much when it ignored him?

How devotedly he'd pored over those books; how wild his imagination had run; how breathless and wonderstruck he felt upon closing them. How many hours had he spent with his eyes glued to the white pages, telling himself to shut it out, forget and fail to notice everything but the characters on the page, shut out everyone before they could do so first.

How many times had his paper-and-ink friends greeted him at the end of a long, lonely week, whispering words of comfort and reassurance? How many times had he lost himself among the pleasure of turning pages and printed words?

He had spent so much time living in other worlds, imagining so many different things, reading aloud in the dark, envying and aching, longing for a change in his solitary routine.

And yet…

This was the one story even he refused to believe. This couldn't really be happening, it wasn't possible, no, he could close his eyes and count to ten, and when he opened them he'd be back with his classmates, following them back to the bus, driving away from the museum, away from this whole crazy day. This couldn't be real – a giant talking rabbit claiming to be the Easter Bunny, eggs crowding around him and clinging to his jeans, pining for attention or touch, the water gushing bright purple behind him, the stone golems winking and beaming merrily at him…

No.

 _It couldn't be real_.

He'd wake up any minute, and he'd be in his bedroom and nothing would have changed, he'd still be nothing to his father and the public joke to his cousin and nothing would have changed, nothing _should_ have changed…

And at that moment, just when he thought things couldn't get any crazier, a sudden streak of shining color darted swiftly into their midst.

Despite his prior inexperience with talking rabbits, despite his ignorance regarding stone golems or sentient eggs, Hiccup had seen birds before, studied them even – a bony, auburn-haired twelve-year-old, nose buried in numerous field guides, eager green eyes scanning every paragraph, memorizing every name.

Hiccup had seen birds, read about them, and he could say with confidence that the thing fluttering toward them, small and green and bright, was certainly a bird, and, judging by the harried, zigzagging motion of its flight, almost certainly injured.

So when the tiny thing reached them, he instinctively cupped his hands to allow it a rest – then, remembering birds were shy creatures, moved to pull them away again. But this one boldly settled itself against his fingers – the feel of the warm, feathery body against his palms was the only proof that this was real.

And then, without warning, the bird twisted to face it, and Hiccup nearly dropped it all over again.

Because it wasn't a bird. At least, not completely. For instead of small, beady black eyes, instead of tough contour feathers, instead of…of being a _bird_ , the creature in his hands had the face of a woman – smooth, pink skin where feathers should have been, wide purple eyes where black ones should have been, and a boldness where wariness, even shyness, should have been prominent.

Violet gaze imperious, the bird-woman studied him for a moment before twisting back around to look at the rabbit and giving a sharp, urgent-sounding chirp. The other's green eyes widened, and without warning, he turned to face Hiccup. "Stay here," he barked, "just stay right there, don't touch anything." He thumped his foot upon the dirt, creating a sizable hole in the ground, already leaning forward in a crouch and preparing to jump in.

"Wait—wait a minute, hang on…" Hiccup tried to protest, and, quite unthinkingly, seized the rabbit's furry arm. Before he could release it, before either had a chance to untangle themselves, the animal leapt, and together they plunged into the earth, speeding erratically down a long, damp tunnel.

It took the rabbit about thirty seconds to realize he had an unwanted passenger; rounding upon the boy, he growled in a voice of pure rage, _"What do you think you're doing?"_

Hiccup did not answer; for his part, he had realized that the only reason his fall was not uncontrollable was thanks to the animal at his side, so he clung ever tighter to the creature, pressing himself deeper into the furry side.

A small, dissatisfied chirp reminded him that he might not be the only one who was frightened; he opened his hand, letting the small bird-woman – the fairy – tumble out onto his lap, resting on his jeans. He kept a hand cupped protectively around her for the remainder of the journey, hoping to shield her from the vast amounts of dirt and rock flying wildly at their faces.

Stomach jumping, heart hammering, face flushed and sweaty, Hiccup began to think that the journey would never come to an end, that they would go careening down through these tunnels until the end of time, that they would never find their destination, never quit falling—

And then, quite suddenly, they did.

He was surrounded at once by twinkling, colored light; by polished hardwood floors and plush red furniture, by a million voices, all at once, everyone talking over each other, nobody heeding anyone else. All he knew was the creature at his side, warm and solid and vaguely reassuring, and the feathery being trying to squirm away from him – he had caught her in his hands again, instinctively grabbed her around the soft belly to protect her from further harm.

The rabbit wrenched himself away immediately, as if the physical contact brought him pain; this might have hurt Hiccup had he not been so used to the feeling, so he merely sat up on his knees, releasing the fairy in his hand, letting her flutter down onto his knee.

"S-sorry," he paused a moment to whisper this to her, scratching her tiny, feathery head gently with his finger. "If I hurt you. I was trying to help you, but if I didn't…"

She waved a minute, dismissive hand in response, communicating clearly enough without words. _I understand. It's alright._

He allowed himself a small smile before the voices at the other end of the room drew his attention.

"…is loose in the Pole…"

"Are you bloody kiddin' me?"

"God forbid…"

This was easily an assortment of the strangest people Hiccup had ever seen – the first to draw his eyes was an enormous man with a long, kempt white beard and sapphire blue eyes, black boots gleaming, with muscles that could put Hiccup's father to shame, and a long red coat belted loosely over a huge belly, speaking with a thick Russian accent.

The second person looked almost exactly like the fairy resting on his leg; except this one was bigger, whole and uninjured, iridescent feathers glinting, highlighting a slim body, swathing her head like a crown, trailing down from her backside like a never-ending skirt, putting Hiccup strangely in mind of a queen. Like the being on his knee, this fairy's features were that of a woman's; from perfectly shaped eyebrows, to her tiny, open mouth, she was stunningly beautiful.

When he at last tore his eyes from her, he saw next a short, round yellow man floating next to her, wide eyes anxious, pudgy hands clasped in front of his person which—which appeared to be made entirely of glittering golden… _sand?_

Hiccup blinked curiously, half-expecting to find himself with his classmates now, but no such luck; the man remained, floating right in front of his eyes, and the person standing next to him moved, drawing the boy's attention.

This final being was easily the most normal-looking of them – he was a thin, wiry boy about Hiccup's own age, not so very remarkable at all except for the white hair springing up in every direction, falling over his thin, dark arched eyebrows and coming to a stop just above his sparkling blue eyes. In one hand, he clutched a thin wooden staff, and unlike the others in the room, he did not seem terribly concerned with the circumstances. No, he looked, if anything, a little amused, and at last stepped forward, putting an effective end to the argument between the rabbit and the huge red-coated man. "Listen, guys, the windows are all closed, right? And we've already engaged lockdown procedure?"

"Exactly my point!" The big fairy chirped, gliding closer to the boy and putting an affectionate hand on his shoulder. "Everyone, we just need to keep calm about this, we can fix this – it's got to still be somewhere on this floor, we just need to—Bunny? Bunny, where's my fairy?"

The tiny being on Hiccup's knee chirped, as if to say _here,_ and this drew everyone's attention on the skinny, auburn-haired boy in their midst.


End file.
